Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway was the best of two worlds.
Predictable favorites like third-place finisher Carl Edwards and ninth-place Jimmie Johnson ran well, but they were joined in the top 10 by several drivers who are producing remarkably better results than last year.
Points leader Jeff Gordon is a victory waiting to happen. Even though he came up just one spot short and finished second to a dominant Kurt Busch, he continues to look like the championship driver of old.
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In the first four races of the season, Gordon has driven cars that were capable of winning every week. The only thing that has kept him from top-five finishes in all of the first four Cup events was rain at Daytona (finished 13th) and a blown tire that ripped off his left front fender last week at Las Vegas (finished sixth).
“It’s just this race team stepping it up,” Gordon said, contrasting the difference between 2009 and the struggles he endured in 2008.
“This team has just been unbelievable this year,” Gordon continued. “The fire in their eye and the things they’ve been working on back at the shop and the set-ups that match my driving styles and things I’ve been working on, physically just being more fit and the pit crew and just everything.”
This might be the best team Gordon has had since he won the championship in 2001.
“In ‘07 we were having fun, but I really never felt like we were one of the best cars,” Gordon said. “Even before the Chase, I felt like (Johnson) was just a little bit better than us.
“This is the first time that I can remember, maybe 2001, that we’ve had something that we battle with these guys and get in there and grind it out and have something for anybody on any different weekend.”
Consistently strong runs elevated him to the top of the Sprint Cup standings lead last week, and his second-place at Atlanta kept him No. 1, 43 points ahead of Clint Bowyer.
“We’ve seen other guys who have beat us and we’re the most consistent one toward the front,” Gordon said. “That’s going to pay off for us in the long run. We haven’t reached our full potential yet. We’re still gaining momentum.”
Gordon isn’t the only driver who has opened eyes thus far this season.
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Brian Vickers ended the 2008 season 19th in the points. But because both Red Bull Racing teams came on strong at the end of the year, it gave the competition a glimpse of things to come.
Often, momentum is hard to sustain over the offseason, but after getting spun by Dale Earnhardt Jr. into a “Big One” crash in the Daytona 500, the No. 83 team has rebounded with three consecutive top-10 finishes that helped Vickers leap six positions in the points to 11th.
In the closing stages of Sunday’s race, Vickers looked as if he might even have a car capable of beating Busch. When the final caution of the afternoon waved on lap 323 for debris from a blown tire on Robby Gordon’s car, the No. 83 was running in the tire tracks of the No. 2 and had chased down the leader from several seconds back.
If the caution had not waved, “we would’ve finished first or second, or wrecked trying,” Vickers said at the close of the race. “We obviously had the better car there at the end. Kurt and I were running the same line, so it wasn’t going to be easy to pass him.”
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